


Pantheon

by iniquiticity



Category: 18th & 19th Century CE RPF, American Revolution RPF, Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Bloodplay, D/s themes, Extreme Misuse of Greek Gods, HELLO SINNERS, Knifeplay, Light BDSM, M/M, Obedience, Overextended Cosmos Metaphors, Painplay, Possible Suicide Ideation, Prenegotiated Kink, Present Tense, Subdrop, Swordplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-29
Updated: 2015-12-29
Packaged: 2018-05-10 05:54:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5573312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iniquiticity/pseuds/iniquiticity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He imagines the man set fire to by the setting sun, blending his blue jacket and red stains and silver steel together, until it seems he is something larger than just a man, even a man as marvelous as he. He imagines the man inflated with confidence and victory and blood --</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pantheon

**Author's Note:**

> mind the tags!
> 
> I hope you enjoy overwrought cosmic metaphors and my wikipedia-brought knowledge of Greek gods and goddesses (because I sure as hell did). You can tweet me your related Hamilton/Founding Fathers-related sinful content at @picklesnake. 
> 
>  This story would not have been possible without [this marvelous image of badass Lafayette](http://elizarioux.tumblr.com/post/135604580082/drawing-cute-lafayettes-is-great-but-we-need-more), by the most esteemed elizarioux on tumblr and my great beta @faunlord.

**

Alexander is working in his room (as he always will be, as it seems that fate has destined him to be, for eternity - one clerk position after another, meaningless and insignificant), when he hears cheers outside. Some victorious contingent coming home from some harrying attack, to be applauded while he sits here writing letters. He scowls at the paper as he tries to recall the schedule. It must be Lafayette, he decides. The man had just left with a decent number of troops not too long ago and was not supposed to be away for long.

He grumbles and wipes sweat from his face with a handkerchief. It’s too damn hot, and he’s stripped down to only his undershirt and his breeches, even going so far as to unwrap his cravat and take off his shoes. Perhaps it’s disrespectful, but he’s feeling too bitter about it now, thinking about how they’re probably all celebrating the Frenchman. Perhaps if he had been sent to battle, he would be wearing his full uniform, instead of melting away in this room, drowning in paper. He scowls at the half-read correspondence in front of him and presses his palms into his closed eyes. 

It is not that he holds Lafayette’s success against him, only that he knows he is good enough accompany the man, and yet his future seems to be an eternity of letters and missives and messages and documents.

He imagines Lafayette outside, laughing, covered in the blood of his enemies, his bloody weapon in his hand. Lafayette has always preferred to be up close and personal - to see the eyes of men he strikes down with his sabre, freshly sharpened. He imagines the Frenchman grinning, white teeth and destruction, cutting a clear line through the British troops. He imagines the man set fire to by the setting sun, blending his blue jacket and red stains and silver steel together, until it seems he is something larger than just a man, even a man as marvelous as he. He imagines the man inflated with confidence and victory and blood --

The door to his room opens and shuts, and clicks locked. 

He looks up. 

His vision, made flesh, is standing there.

He stares. 

He can no longer read the papers set in front of him. He cannot see anything but this vision of power and beauty and strength in front of him. His discontent flees him all at once. 

He was right - this creature _is_ so much more than human, like some god, satisfied and satiated from battle, like he has gorged on some immortal feast of the enemy’s spirit and souls, like he has sucked the marrow from their bones and the morale from their lines --

The great creature smiles at him, and bows a grand bow. 

Alexander barely collects his jaw from the floor. “God,” he manages.

There is a shift in the vision’s expression. 

“Be still,” it announces, in a hiss, and Alexander knows that voice, and that command, and that sudden look in those dark eyes. 

He goes rigid. 

The flat of the steel point of the blade taps against the underside of his chin. He sucks in a breath and feels it rattling in his lungs. Some part of him is imagining this magnificent creature slicing through red fabric and flesh with this weapon, and now it is turned on him. A heat rises in his stomach, wilting all other thoughts. He can no longer consider doubt, or the future, or documents. He can barely think of himself. 

“I am Ares, or Mars, the great god of battle, of untamed war, of violence, of savage death, of destruction,” proclaims the vision, in a low, deadly voice that makes him forget his own name. “I have taken away my enemy’s spirit with my sons, Phobos and Deimos. I have struck them into chaos with my sister, Eris, the great goddess of discord. I have been accompanied by my Makhai, the spirits of battle -- deafened them with my children Homados and Alala, massacred them with Proioxis and Palioxis, spread turmoil across their lines with Kydoimos. And it is now, returning accompanied by the goddess Nike, that I demand my spoils of war.” 

He thinks he is supposed to respond in some manner, but he has nothing - no flesh, no voice, no heart. He is barely a shadow in comparison to this brilliant sun.

The god comes closer, until they are separated only by the desk, drawn together by the cold steel against his flesh. 

“I demand no less than Aphrodite, the beautiful Venus, the most flawless of all the goddesses. I demand her retainers and her retinue. I demand Cupid, the goddess of lust; I demand Anteros so that my desire may be requited, and Himeros, so that my thirst be quenched; I demand Hedylogos, to hear the sweet nothings a god of my station deserves; I demand Pothos, so that I may be longed for.” 

The blade follows the line of his throat, and he must not shudder. It trails down his shirt, and suddenly his flesh is exposed where buttons are no longer threaded to the fabric. 

“Stand, my prize,” his god -- no, for a god can be so small, and so petty. This thing is larger. This is a spirit, a planet, a universe. “Come here.”

He obeys, because he must obey. 

The blade moves, pushing the shirt off his shoulders, leaving his bare flesh exposed.

He is the earth, seeming so still in space, unmoving as the ground. Without his agreement or request, there is a sudden storm raging under his skin, passion and desire in barely suppressed waves. The heat of it surges like the tide, sliding in and out, washing over him, and then leaving him dry. 

This god, this universe, this creature, this vision - this is his moon. He is shaped by the overwhelming force of this god; his tides of his lust are controlled by it. 

His god has eyes dark like stars. His moon steps closer, and his tide surges across the beach of his mind, wiping out all other thoughts. He is dizzy with it.

He cannot reach. He is bound into this orbit as surely as if he were a planet. He is trapped here, still as ice. He is a captive.

He is held by the steel held again to his throat, as solid as an iron shackle. He used to think nothing beside death could be found at the tip of a blade, but now it seemed like all sorts of feelings, emotions, and sensations hide in the hair's breadth between his flesh and the deadly edge. His god has brought him this knowledge. His universe has melded him until he is a perfect planet.

There is no time to measure how long they remain. The earth cannot count.

His moon steps closer, until his seas are crashing in great waves. He can hear only the roar of blood in his ears and the great rumbling that is the sound of the ocean. He can think of nothing but the inevitable crash of water on manmade obstacles - levees and dams and walls. He imagines them crumbling against the unceasing current. 

He makes a desperate noise. It is the noise of the stone wearing away and trees being swept downstream. It is the noise of understanding your own insignificance in the shadow of something so much greater. It is of drowned grass and disappearing islands. He can feel the steel that holds his orbit against his flesh, feels the surge of danger in coming even a fraction closer. 

It is as sure as a chain clasped around his neck. He stares at his moon as one observes the stars. His moon is mysterious, with undiscovered craters and untold mountains. His god is a god of great unknowns. 

His moon steps closer still, until they are so close that he can see the prickle of hair beneath flesh like a soon-to-be-grown forest. His god’s eyes glow like gems in a quarry. His moon’s lips are rolling hills. He can feel his moon’s breath on him, like solar wind, like a voice too powerful for mortal ears. It rubs him raw. His flesh is too delicate. He is unprepared. 

Still, he is held captive by their link. Still, he cannot move from it, despite the agony. 

It is unbearable, this closeness. His volcanos wish to erupt, held back only by his force of will. Plates shift under his flesh, creating new islands and erasing old ones. Mountains appear where there were plains; chasms rip apart broad savannahs. 

_”Très bien,”_ says his moon, against his lips, and he is tearing apart, fracturing, the hot core of his planet exposed to be manipulated and destroyed and crushed by the unfeeling galaxy. He whimpers, and the steel at his throat brushes so close to him that he can feel the cool edge of it. It could tear him apart. It would cut through his skin like lightening crashing to earth. It could render him nothing, could split him into nameless asteroids in all directions.

He could be smote. He could become ash. 

And yet he is drawn to it, like a moth to a flame. There is nothing like being so close to his own destruction. There is nothing like knowing at any second, he could cease. 

“Please,” he says, a breath. It is a dare. It is a risk. The word could drive him over the edge of oblivion, could tip him into the void, could swallow him in sweet darkness. Adrenaline surges in his blood, pumping him with energy he cannot use. To use this desire, raging in him like a hurricane, would be the same as throwing himself to the mercy of death itself. He has to resist it. He has to suppress it, as if it is a thing that can be suppressed. As if clouds can be convinced not to rain, or waves can be convinced not to crash. 

“ _Mon dieu_ ,” says his moon, and closes the remaining distance between them. 

It seems that this torture can increase endlessly, and exponentially, ratcheting him back like a rope, so taut and so tight that the strands fight not to fray. His moon kisses him like starfall, like a sunshower, like windswept pollen, like the touch of the divine. It is too much, especially as he is still a prisoner, held captive by this unnatural steel against his skin. He is motionless and alive with the thrill of it, with the fear that ebbs and flows, that wraps around him but does not touch. He is restrained, so utterly and completely. 

Yet, he is used. Yet, he is asked of. He is touched. He is _kissed_. 

He is asked for everything, and he can give nothing. He is given everything and can take nothing. It is as if the whole universe could bend to his will, if only he could ask; the war would end, if only he could request peace; the planet would stop rotating, if he could only let it know.

He is powerless. The knowledge of it overwhelms him, as if he has drank too much, and everything is blurred and dizzy, too hot, narrowing his focus to those sweet lips and this sharp blade. It’s too much, and he is going to become unable to resist, the desire wearing at him like a stream turning into a river, overflowing with rain, swelling over its banks, until there is nothing but mud and the roar of the water. It’s too much, and he is going to be drowned by it, swallowed by the darkness, his lungs filling with lust -- 

A shiver races through him. It is a betrayal of his defenses against these attacks, and he is punished for his betrayal by the slide of steel against his throat. There is pain, but the punishment is so slight that there is no blood. There is a vision of the end, but it is accompanied by only the fire of wanting that darkness. The shock of it leaves him hungry for more. The forces that work upon him pull him in more directions and dimensions that should exist. 

He wants to push forward into the welcoming darkness and end the starvation and misery and cold. He wants to press himself against the steel, feel it slide across his flesh and spill bright red blood. He would be a stain on his god’s coat.

He wants to be still. He wants to show his moon that he can be tamed, that he can be part of an orbit, that he can be domesticated and docile. He can be a good servant. He can be a good priest, if only this god will have him.

He wants to take, to rip, to pull and tear, to kiss and bite, to lick, to touch as if death will come tomorrow, and there is no reason to hold back or save or store for winter. He wants to feel and know every inch of flesh, every taste of skin and tongue. He wants to be consumed in the ashes of his own hunger. 

_”Monsieur_ ,” his moon rumbles against his lips, “Control yourself.” 

He cannot hold. He has already been bad enough, and there is a line of pain at his neck now, swinging sweetly of what he could have more of, of what he could get. It is a tantalizing view of the future.

Part of him wishes to bleed, to feel the warm trickle of it down his skin. He wants the sensation as desperately as he wants to be good. He wants to be punished and praised all at once. 

A thumb brushes against his cheek and wipes away a tear. “There there,” his moon says, “It is my mistake. You are being so good, my Alexander. I think you deserve a reward. Do you think so?” 

He is asked a question --

But the steel -- 

And his overwhelming desire, clogging his throat like drowning --

And sweet pain, distracting him -- 

And the lust, so intense he is dizzy with it --

“An answer, _s'il vous plaît_.” 

His moon wants him to die. His moon wants him to end himself against the ever-present steel. He must obey, and yet the end seems so dark, and so final, and so permanent, and there’s a million things he hasn’t done --

“No,” he whispers, and the steel slides away an inch, so he can speak. There is no further pain. His moon does not wish for the end. His moon was testing his orbit. His god was testing his faith, testing his loyalty. He was only asked for him to prove himself, to prove that that he was good, that he was subservient, that he could follow orders. 

“I think you do,” his god says, and he pulls the blade away completely. 

He takes a deep, desperate breath. Oxygen floods his system, but it brings him no clarity. Instead, it is one attack after another - the tsunami after the earthquake, the other half of the hurricane. And for this surge, he cannot draw power from his moon through the sabre, cannot use it to ride his tides, has no threat of the dark end. He staggers forward, unable to catch himself, mind fogged like a steaming jungle. 

He is caught. His moon is overpowering, the highlight of his sky. There is nothing else - no twinkling stars, no endless night. It is only the glow of the moon, of divinity, across skin.

“Ah, _mon amour_ ,” his moon says into his ear. A kiss is placed there. “You have been so good. So marvelous, and so beautiful, and so obedient, and so agreeable. My perfect soldier.” 

He gets his feet under him. He has feet. He has hands, and flesh, and a heart. He is more than flowing desire and the urge to obey and the need for sharp, hot pain. 

His god does not release him, but his grip loosens. He is held like a man, not a slave, not a planet. He is held only because he cannot hold himself. 

“Gil,” he mutters. It is his secret name for this man. It is an open secret, like so much seems to be, these days. It is his. 

“How you can be so beautiful, I do not know,” Lafayette murmurs, one arm wrapped around his waist. He is supported by it, more than his own power. “I must confess: I insult you to call you Aphrodite. You are more. You are greater. Did Aphrodite touch you as you slept? Did she sing songs to you as a babe? Did she reward you after some mythical quest that mortals like me are never to know?” 

He can focus only on breathing, on assuring himself that he is still alive. He allows himself to be held, to give in, to be small and weak. It is hard to do anything else at this moment, other than let the other man’s voice wrap around him, warm and comforting, pulling him away from the end.

“Or was it Eros?” continues the voice, wandering, meandering, “Was it Cupid himself, who came upon you as a child, as an infant, as a thought? Did he bless you before there was a you to be blessed? Did he bless the thought of you, and when you came into this body, it was already wrapped into your spirit, sewn into your soul as thread?” 

He clings to the sound of it, to this man, greater than a moon or a sun or a galaxy or a god. He is held, so securely, as if he could never fall, as if he could never fail. The sound is stronger than steel. 

He is laid out on his bed, on their bed, and Lafayette settles himself there as well. Lafayette pulls him close and doesn’t stop touching him - drawing his fingers through his hair, caressing his face, drawing his nails down the line of the muscle of his bicep. Lafayette kisses him, his face and his eyes and his lips. He can feel the other man so clearly, crisp like sharp winter air. He is _real_ , where the world seems so hazy. 

“How are you, Alexander?” Lafayette whispers. The man’s fingers trace his earlobe, down the curve of his neck. 

“Gil,” he murmurs again, softly. “I am well.” 

“I have cut you,” Lafayette says, and he can feel the man's fingers at the slice at his neck. There is pain in the background, behind the warmth of the man's skin and then soothing lilt of his voice.

“Pay it no mind,” he says, because he cannot deny the delicious, harsh warmth that the man’s fingers brought, just for a moment.

Lafayette touches the wound again, and a hiss escapes Alexander’s lips. 

The Frenchman meets his eyes, and there's a spark there, one that finds his lagging pulse and sets it on its feet again. “I shall make it up to you,” he says, and he presses harder against the cut, evicting a ragged gasp. “Oh, my Alexander, my god of love, of sex, of beauty. You are magnificent. Is this what you desire? For me, your great god of war, to ravage you in his particular manner?” 

There is a long silence, because he is wrapped up in the sharp heat of the other man’s touch. 

“Yes,” he says, finally.

Lafayette nods, and his hand trails down Alexander’s face, across the slim line of his shoulder, to his bare arm.

The gentleness of his caress evaporates in a second, and he digs his nails into Alexander’s bicep. The pain strikes him so suddenly, so completely and so forcefully, that he can do nothing but gasp.

His own fingers find purchase on Lafayette’s jacket, bunching the wool in his hands. The pressure doesn’t ease, and the pain radiates outwards until his hands are shaking. He’s breathing in desperate gulps when the Frenchman finally releases him. 

The pain stays at the forefront for a while, and it’s hard to speak. 

“I know what you desire, _mon amour_ ,” Lafayette's voice is dark with promise. Alexander shudders and nods, feeling more desperate than he’d like. “Can you sit for me, my perfect Alexander?” 

He wants to obey, but it's not easy. He releases his grip on Lafayette with terrible effort, and the man makes space on the little cot for him to sit. 

He can feel Lafayette’s eyes on him, watching. He is not being watched as some bounty, or spoils of war, or a treasure. He is being watched as a man, as gently as a lover. 

“Let me,” Lafayette murmurs, and he comes close again. He touches Alexander with a tenderness so wonderfully stark in comparison to the blood that stains his jacket. He shifts the man until he can rest against the wall behind the cot. 

“My apologies,” Alexander says, unable to resist a smile, because it is too much to experience all of this at once. There is the glorious wrath of his man, and the intensity of his desire, and the unbearably soft touch of his assistance. 

“Pay it no mind,” Lafayette echoes, and he tips Alexander’s head up, catching his lips in a gentle kiss. “ _Je t'aime_ , even after you are unable to sit properly.” 

He can do nothing but laugh into the kiss. “You cannot blame me for being so completely consumed by your unique attentions, as marvelous as we both know them to be.” 

“I cannot be shaken in my quest by your flattery, my love.” 

Alexander doesn’t bother to respond, especially because he is captivated by Lafayette retrieving his sabre at the foot of the cot. The man is too marvelous a sight, even if he is only a mortal man - some of his hair straying from his ponytail, falling around his face in what would seem a manner too perfect to be by accident, his blue jacket stained red as if art intended it to be so, even a bit of blood dried onto his neck and at his jawline. “You look a god. I presume I do not need to ask to hear your heroics in battle.” 

“I struck down twelve men by myself, and the last I left barely alive, so that he could sow fear and terror of our forces, and of me,” Lafayette returns, and he swings the weapon with enough force leaves a hiss in the air. 

It stops a hair from moon-shaped bruises growing on Alexander’s bare arm. The flat of the blade presses against his flesh, and his breath hitches. 

“You could instead seek new ground, instead of retreading what you have already claimed,” Alexander says, and his eyes are daring, even if he can’t quite manage to shake the want entirely from his voice, “Especially as there is a clear path to such a thing.” 

Lafayette makes an agreeing noise, eying his bare chest with evident appreciation. His next slash comes a breath from Alexander’s thigh. 

“You know I do not appreciate being coddled,” Alexander says, a little harsher this time, and he takes a delicate hold of the end of the sabre, careful not to cut his inkstained fingers. He brings it to his neck. “Or is it that you do not care for me as much as you announce?” 

“You dare,” Lafayette replies, an offended breath. 

“I only note what I observe, as any good secretary,” he retorts, and sighs with pleasure as the sharp side of it kisses his skin, as tender as lips. He lets Lafayette pull the blade back and watches the Frenchman with bright eyes, daring. 

“I shall give you a more thorough report,” Lafayette says, shifting his grasp on his weapon and striking again. This time, he makes contact - solid contact, enough that the weapon is red when he pulls it away. 

It’s like lightening. Alexander gasps, then bites down his lip to suppress the rising moan. 

The pain is hot and sharp and addicting, running up his arm and settling in his stomach like a hungry beast. It doesn’t leave so quickly this time, pulsing with his heartbeat. It is accompanied by the warm crawl of blood down his arm - tickling in some strange way, like a prelude and conclusion all at once to the monster that hungers inside him.

He thinks of the little scars Lafayette has left on his thighs. He thinks of the sheets they have had to burn because he has begged too hard and Lafayette was too willing, and too precise, and could could shed too much blood and draw so much pleasure without doing any truly great harm. He thinks of the questions Laurens never asks when they change clothes. He thinks of the sweet, silent darkness, masking their activities. 

“Again, please,” he hisses, and Lafayette obliges, leaving another thin stream of red under the first one, which has already stopped bleeding. It is the mastery that the Frenchman has of his weapon that makes Alexander desire him as much as the act of using it. He thinks of the passion and intensity of Lafayette on the battlefield, running some poor man through, and then they are here, and that intensity is repurposed to deliver these delicate kisses upon his flesh. 

“Lafayette,” he gasps out, ragged, chasing the coursing pain and pleasure, vicious like venom and aching better than a bruise. “Gil.” 

“Oh, Alexander,” Lafayette manages, equally as breathless, and suddenly the man is sitting on top of him, kissing him too deeply for him to think. “ _Je t’aime_. I love you. I love this. You bleed more beautifully than any.” 

“I would have none other than you draw my blood,” Alexander says, and he looks at his arm, where there are now two red lines and a few small streams of blood following the line of his musculature. “And to have you do so fills me with unimaginable joy and even more unimaginable pleasure.” 

Lafayette chuckles. “I can imagine your pleasure, _mon amour_ , for I know it as well.” 

Alexander looks at his arm again, and draws his blood onto his hand. He looks at it for moment - wet and glistening, mysterious, beautiful, and the cause and the solution to all their problems. 

He smears his wet hand across the front of Lafayette’s jacket, leaving a new streak of red against the fabric. 

“Now you can say you have conquered fourteen men, for you have surely slain me as much as any redcoat.” 

There is a pause, and Alexander can only think of the sweet pain singing in his arm, and the harsh sound of the other man’s breathing. 

Lafayette reaches to brush a finger against his newly re-stained jacket. He draws the wet finger across his lips. 

“Any British soldier would choose death long before what I am going to do to you, you sinful creature,” Lafayette rumbles, and Alexander can barely drag his gaze from the man’s reddened lips to his eyes, all wide pupil, filled with an unbearable, insatiable hunger, “For the devil himself will surely sing songs of the terrible sodomy I am going to commit to you, and the wonderful pleasure of which I suspect you will derive from it.” 

“Perhaps in hell we will be able to do nothing but ravish each other until the end time,” Alexander whispers, and he licks his lips, unwilling to blink as Lafayette sheds his coat. “If so, let us both be martyrs in this war, and in the next life, we may wake, and you may slice my flesh until I am red all over with blood, and ravish me, and we shall go to sleep, and the next day we will repeat such a thing, for eternity.” 

“Do not sing me such sweet promises, _mon amour_ ,” Lafayette says, as the pace of his undressing speeds up, “For Ares was reckless and uncontrollable, and I cannot promise to not bear such traits as if you like that I bear his name.”

Alexander looks up the other man and draws him onto the bed. “As your Aphrodite, it is my wish - nay, my duty, my obligation - to slake your reckless and uncontrollable lust, and it is with such I demand, if I may be so outlandish to demand, you show it to me.”

“I shall have to punish you for being so forward,” Lafayette murmurs into his skin, peppering bites into his neck. 

“Please have mercy,” Alexander says, in a tone that begs for the opposite. 

“No quarter will be granted,” Lafayette replies, deadpan, pushing Alexander more completely onto the cot, then surging on top of him.

Alexander allows himself to drown completely in the overwhelming desire, power, and strength of something better than gods or planets or the cosmos. 

His lover.


End file.
